My Brilliant Career: Kristen Wiig

The SNL funnywoman has six movies out this year, wrote her own star vehicle to be Judd Apatow'd, and still gives her all to the Target Lady

By
Kristen Wiig, as told to Rachel Rosenblit

Mar 19, 2010

Danielle Levitt/August

The worst job I ever had, I only had for one day. It was answering phones at a law office. It was the most complicated phone system you could imagine, and they taught it to me in one second and were like, "Okay, bye!"—and left me there. I was in classes at [L.A.'s improv group] the Groundlings, not yet on the main stage, a struggling—in quotes—actor, and it was one of those things where you're like, What am I doing with my life? It sounds so cheesy, but there's something very powerful about looking in the mirror and asking yourself a question. Because I think it's really hard to lie.

The Groundlings was such a good place to learn. You could have a scene with two people, and the person who barely talks could be just as funny as the person doing all the talking. With improv, it's a combination of listening and not trying to be funny. Never try to be funny—the audience can tell. I don't know if you can articulate an instinct. I don't rehearse a lot. I try to keep it organic. Even in movies, the less I rehearse, the better I am.

My manager encouraged me to audition for SNL. It's a five-minute monologue with various characters and impressions—I did the Target Lady, Aunt Linda. It was the scariest five minutes of my life. I'm not a standup, so I don't usually perform by myself. Then you just fly home and wonder how you did. The season started and I actually didn't get it, but they called after the fourth show and said they wanted me to come out. I remember at the first taping, seeing Lorne Michaels walking around and being really scared: Oh my God, there's Lorne. Even now, I look at my life and can't believe that I'm almost into my fifth season.

When I first started on SNL, I made the mistake of googling myself. Oh, everybody does. I was like, I wonder what people are saying? It was the worst thing. I was crying. A lot of it was nice, but it doesn't matter: You remember the bad, not the good.

Doing a character for the first time is scary, but honestly, doing it a second time is scarier, because you want it to live up—so I put more pressure on myself the fourth or fifth time. It's always more fun to play the loser. You have more room to play. You could be the person at the party who's like, "Oh my God, what's wrong with her?" or you could be the person who has something really wrong with you. [Before] I did that character Shanna, the sexy lady who does gross things—we did it with John Malkovich and Charles Barkley—I remember a writer saying, "Let's try something where you look good." I was like, What's funny about that? How do we even do that? That was a specific effort—for me not to be a 45- year-old woman with, like, short hair and a lot of problems.

I have moments where I'm like, This is my job?! Especially when I'm in a crazy costume and it's Saturday night and we're very seriously talking about, like, "Okay, should I do a cow voice that's really serious or should I do one...." What are we talking about!?

I think my biggest challenge is that a lot of the time, people see you as only one thing. It's not their fault, because you know someone from what you know them from. But I don't consider myself a comedian; I consider myself an actor who does comedy...and also drama. I've done dramatic roles—I really love them and hope to do a lot more.

Don't become something just because someone else wants you to, or because it's easy; you won't be happy. You have to do what you really, really, really, really want to do, even if it scares the shit out of you.

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